About

Vashon Climate School

Learning skills that promote confidence and self-reliance

Like the climate, the times they are a changing . . . We will soon be feeding, housing, clothing, and caring for each other, on our own little island.

What does a young person need to know to live well in an uncertain future?

Learn to plan, plant, grow, sew, create, can, build, buy, sell, design, develop, manufacture, market, weave, and wild craft – right here, right now. Expand your confidence and skills in collaboration with your peers.

Take your future into your own head and hands – literally.

You will be guided into a greater sense of your capacity to shape the future world you desire.

This Earth is your Home.
Learn to live with it sustainably.

We believe Vashon Youth can embrace their agency,
define a new culture, and adapt to a changing world.

Our Mission

Vashon Climate School is being formed to assist island youth in developing self-reliance and adaptive strategies for their futures. Our mission is to provide free classes and workshops that activate a sense of agency and competence in young people. These will have two primary orientations. The first is to develop practical skills needed for a more sustainable, locally generated lifestyle. Skills to be taught will include woodworking, farming, sewing, cooking, wildcrafting, green energy generation, etc. The second is to assist them in learning about climate science, future impacts on island life, sustainability issues, and potential adaptive strategies. This latter category will promote their own research, communicating it to others and the community, as well as social and artistic activism.

Learn Self-Reliance.

Make Your Own World.

Our Vision

These efforts have been conceived to address the extreme uncertainties our young people will face in their lifetimes, while seeking to ease anxiety about their futures by promoting a sense of agency and creative adaptivity. In the process, participants will experience a cooperative social context focused upon purposeful action. We are calling upon adult islanders to step forward and contribute their knowledge to our young people now, while they have time to prepare themselves to live in a rapidly changing world.